Business owners and entrepreneurs are often lauded for working against all the odds and being too stubborn to quit. But in reality, there are times when quitting is the best option available.

A report recently released in New Jersey shows that, of the $4 billion in tax credits the Garden State has given to companies since 2010, a whopping 43 percent have been for jobs that already exist. Kish Rajan, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development,says that is definitely not going to happen in California

About 70 percent of my team are introverts, and all of them were here when I came on board as a manager. They won’t come together to solve problems. In fact, one of my employees told me, “I like to figure things out on my own.” It’s like each one of them lives on an island, and it’s too hard to take their boat over to collaborate. Any advice?

Board members are introduced and then immediately expected to get along, share ideas and be productive. But that’s a difficult pattern for boards to follow effectively. So what makes a stellar board member?

Todo un poco means “a little bit of everything,” and that’s exactly how co-owner Marie Mertz describes her strategy. She runs the bistro’s operations, cooks, builds menus, chooses the daily specials, buys fresh produce, trains staff, handles community relations and hand-selects her wines. She’s proud of being in business for so many years, but “who’s counting when you’re having fun?” she says.

The old-school office style emphasized privacy and individual productivity. But the new model prioritizes the ideals of the creative class — that fast-growing, highly educated, well-paid segment of the workforce that values creativity, collaboration and the ability to customize.

Kris Barkley, the Design Director at Dreyfuss & Blackford Architects and president of the American Institute for Architects Central Valley, sat down with Comstock’s Editor in Chief Christine Calvin to talk about digital fabrication, biomimicry, the industry landscape for up-and-coming architects and, of course, next months’s Experience Architecture Week. 

VSP wanted The Shop in Midtown to be flexible, buildable and breakable, a learning space and a prototype in itself (form following function). With that in mind, architects put wheels on the tables and on corrugated cardboard walls to make everything portable and adaptable.

Thomas Edison is most often credited with inventing a thing, the light bulb. But if you really take a look at what Edison did, you’ll see he was able to envision not only the technology, but also how people would use it and why they would benefit from its use. What he actually created was a product with a fully realized marketplace. Edison’s approach was an early example of a concept that has since been dubbed “design thinking” — a creative manner of problem-solving that places the user at the center of the experience.

Abandoning your email is sort of like running away from home: We all know you’ll be back by dinner time.